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September 12, 2011 4:54pm by David Farrar

The train blame game

At Stuff I blog on the train blame game.

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Comment33

NZ Politics
Sport
Auckland Council
By the numbers
Len Brown
Steven Joyce
Stuff
trains

Comments (33)

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jaba

it’s John Keys fault .. or maybe Murray McCully or possibly Steven Joyce.
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September 12, 2011 5:03pm
KiwiGreg

It’s society’s fault!! Right we’ll arrest them then.
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September 12, 2011 5:06pm
tintintom

Len Brown still doesn’t get it. From the Mayors comments that I heard at the weekend. He was implying that the issues won’t happen again due to the fact there won’t be a fireworks display before the final, thus the implication – the trains will run ok.

Yeah right!

I suspect as long as there is no owning of the problem, very little will be different.

They must be prepared for at least the same number of people going on the trains to the final, party or no party.

From a PR perspective they must also give assurances they can cope with the same number of people if not more using the system eg using more carriages and also having security on the trains.

The real answer is catch a bus!
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September 12, 2011 5:17pm
Nick R

Nice try, but I don’t think the Government can completely avoid criticism here. The fiasco on Friday was not new or unforeseeable. Exactly the same thing happened in November when U2 played Mt Smart, and that was only 40,000 or so people.

I don’t believe for one second that the Government simply asked the Council to sort out the trains, and then left them to it. Not with the planning that has gone into all other aspects of the World Cup.

So by all means blame the Council, it is after all their city. But the Government does not deserve a free pass for this.
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September 12, 2011 5:28pm
jaba

Lenny B will be on Closeup at 7 .. ca.’t wait see watch his facial expressions .. he and Cunnliffe are great to watch even though they speak with forked tongues
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September 12, 2011 5:33pm
calendar girl

From the “Herald”:

“The review is being carried out by Auckland Transport chairman Mark Ford, who gave councillors an assurance on Thursday that every eventuality had been planned for and only an act of God would stop a smooth passage to the game.

“Auckland Transport council chief executive David Warburton is assisting Mr Ford with the review, which will be completed tomorrow.”

This so-called review of Friday’s rail problems doesn’t exactly give me any confidence. Auckland Transport was the very entity that failed to ensure the security and reliability of its own rail services on Friday evening. Now the Chairman and the Interim Chief Executive of that same organisation are to carry out a review into what went wrong on their own watch. That can result in only one outcome – more finger-pointing in any direction other than at Auckland Transport.

These people in Len Brown’s structure seem to understand none of the basic principles of sound governance. And Brown himself should insist on disinterested leadership of a properly-constituted review.
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September 12, 2011 5:53pm
Pauleastbay

Auckland is a car town, not a train town, always has been and always will be.
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September 12, 2011 6:05pm
tristanb

We sound like a bunch of whinging poms. So the trains weren’t perfect, so some people missed their game. It’s not the end of the world. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.

It seems all the media have become Captain Hindsights, whining on about what could have been.
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September 12, 2011 6:12pm
mikenmild

It’s quite funny to see everyone play the blame game or running away from any responsibility.

Let’s flip it around: who would be standing up to take the credit if Auckland hosted these games with no problems?

Of course it’s no one person’s fault – decades of ‘reform’ to improve ‘accountability’ have made sure that could never be the case.

The train problems seem operational – with a number of contributing factors that should be fixed relatively easily. The main failure seems to be the much-lauded Party Central – is there anything that can fix that properly before I come up to enjoy the final?
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September 12, 2011 6:32pm
Steve

Pauleastbay nails it: “Auckland is a car town, not a train town, always has been and always will be.”
Stick your trains where the global warming sun don’t shine and build us lots of roads, BIG ROADS. We pay the TAX, so we should get what we want, not what stupid Len wants
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September 12, 2011 6:42pm
campit

Having the mayor, who has the ultimate responsibility for Auckland Transport, encourage everyone to leave their car behind and take the train, but then take a car himself was a very silly decision.

Taking the car was a smart decision, given that crowd volumes were way beyond what planners said they would be.

A far more serious issue that no one seems to be sticking their hand up for is fundamental lack of crowd control. We could have had another Hillsborough stadium type disaster there. It had all the ingredients – a massive unexpected crowd, no communication, immovable steel barriers and tv screens, no organised ticketing for Queens Wharf, unlimited supplies of alcohol.
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September 12, 2011 6:52pm
campit

Auckland is a car town, not a train town, always has been and always will be.

The events of Friday disprove your theory. From midday all public transport was at capacity. Full standing loads from Albany. Long queues at the ferry terminals. Full standing loads on the train.
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September 12, 2011 6:54pm
Pauleastbay

Well Campit, they should have taken their car should’nt they.

Fucking sheep,………… ..we were told to do this ,do that…………..

You can walk to the park from the central city in under an hour.

Western Springs to the park in under an hour.

Drive and walk a bit and you are home.

The several people I know that went to the game had no problems because they drove and walked and did not listen to city flunkies
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September 12, 2011 7:02pm
Viking2

Funnily people will do as they are asked to do. and they did. Leave your car at home and take a train. And they did.
Always do the opposite to what the crowd is going to do. Simple logic really.

Oh and you watch on final night. They will all take their bloody cars, so go by train.
8)
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September 12, 2011 7:13pm
wreck1080

There would have been deaths were the stadium at the waterfront. Jeez, they couldn’t even cope with no stadium .
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September 12, 2011 7:51pm
BeaB

Thought Len was just a bit of a loop but tonight on Closeup he came over as slippery with that distinct touch of control freak. There’s something very unpleasant beneath that goofy exterior.
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September 12, 2011 9:48pm
campit

@BeaB I thought he was straight up. He fronted. He apologised. And as Sainsbury pointed out, McCully was a no show.
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September 12, 2011 10:28pm
Rich Prick

The Greens must be loving this triumph of public transport. Welcome to what the plebs who use it in Wellington contend with every second day, without heating.
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September 12, 2011 10:40pm
Murray

Hey nick does the “government” run the bloody Auckland trains?
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September 13, 2011 8:21am
RRM

As per the other thread, I blame the drunken f*ckwits who kept pulling the Emergency stop levers.

No amount of political ideology or forceful debate is going to do anything against air brakes 😉
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September 13, 2011 8:54am
RRM

Meanwhile, Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett had it all figured out and he knew all along exactly how many boozy rugby people were going to be at the opening night fiasco, and he’s shocked that anyone could have estimated it wrongly.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Council-Govt-both-slammed-over-Aucklands-train-fail/tabid/419/articleID/225534/Default.aspx

What a complete and utter f*ckwit!
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September 13, 2011 9:08am
Owen McShane

This classic “group think” behaviour and decision making reflects the rail worship documented in “The Mythical Conception of Rail in Los Angeles.”
Go here: http://americandreamcoalition.org/transit/mythRail.pdf

Any modelling of the convergence of people arriving into Britomart in huge numbers while huge numbers were trying to leave for Eden Park would have revealed that the rail system would fail. But the “mythical concept” is that rail solves all problems, and to admit doubt is a heresy. The Taxis of Auckland carry more public transport trips per year than rail ever will, but they were told they were not needed because rail and buses would cope.

Taxis are cars and hence ‘unblessed’.
Rail systems are inherently fragile and only seemed reliable were cars and buses weren’t.

Visions and Myths are no substitute for sound analysis.

The normal pattern is that the actual analysts and engineers etc sound all the warning about the weakness of rail but are over ridden by the “myth makers”.. But when their predictions prove correct the engineers get the blame.
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September 13, 2011 9:13am
Owen McShane

In Memorium
Shouldn’t there be some recognition of Lew Pryme’s remarkable achievement in getting the Rugby World Cup off the ground back in 1987?
Lew Pryme used to have his offices in Newmarket. He was a talent agent, and my wife Jenny Parkinson was on his books, and so we got to know him well.

Sometime in the early eighties, while I was President of the Newmarket Business Association, I was crossing Broadway from Smith and Caughey’s to Saks when Lew came up to me and said “I am thinking of launching a World Cup from NZ. What do you think?”
the country, and if anyone could do it, he was the man.

He was certainly in the right place at the right time. I notice that no one talks about whose idea it all was, and who put in those early efforts. I hope it has nothing to do with his death from AIDS in 1990. As I recall he was also an Auckland City Councillor – but maybe not.

HIs motivation was that the South African tours had damaged the Rugby brand for many families in New Zealand and was turning off young people in droves. He wanted something to put that in the past and to present a more “modern” image recognising that Sport was now part of the entertainment global industry. He thought that by extending Rugby contacts onto the world stage the South African issue would be defused.

When he died, Jenny sent a card to his family saying he had been successful beyond his dreams.

From WIkipedia
“The eighties saw Pryme moving into the sports arena, following a controversial decision by the Auckland Rugby Union to appoint him as their first Executive Director.

He combined entertainment and sport by introducing cheerleaders, rock ‘n roll acts and music to entertain the crowds in 1986. During this period he also co-hosted a regular radio rugby show with Tim Bickerstaff.

Pryme kept his private life private, telling few of the sporting people he worked with that he was gay.

In the late eighties both he and his long time partner, were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. His partner died on April 16 1990 and Pryme passed away a week later – still essentially ‘in the closet’.”

I do hope that the complete news black out on the origins of the First World Cup is not because his Gay life and death from Aids does not sit well with the preferred image of the game – and the normal range of Rugby Heroes.

Surely, we have grown up enough to recognise people on their merits. Lew was truly one of nature’s gentlemen.

And it was a brave decision of the Board to appoint him Executive Director. I don’t think they were aware of his sexual preferences – it was more the blond hair and career as a pop singer etc.

He stood for Auckland City Council but am not sure whether he was elected or not. Someone out their will know.
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September 13, 2011 9:17am
campit

@RRM, that would be the same Chamber of Commerce that issued this release back in February:

Auckland Transport “Will be Ready” for Rugby World Cup 2011

A huge amount of work has been done over the past year and will continue this year to make sure Auckland transport is ready for the Rugby World Cup 2011 – “and I have total confidence we will be ready and able to provide a first class service for visitors and get maximum benefit from hosting the event,” said Auckland Chamber of Commerce CEO Michael Barnett.

Mr Barnett, who is planning co-ordinator for Auckland’s RWC arrangements, was commenting on a Wellington report today that Auckland is not ready to cope with the more than 60,000 overseas visitors expected to flood the city for the 2011 RWC.
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September 13, 2011 10:20am
Doc

Fundamentally, the problem is with the location of Eden Park.

However… This problem was compounded exponentially by the fact that Auckland has only one public transport “Hub” – Britomart in the CBD. Trains, Ferries, Buses – all require you to pass through that particular choke point. …and some genius decided that it would be a smart idea to throw a 200,000 strong party right on top of it, precisely when it was being expected to cope with an unprecedented load.
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September 13, 2011 10:31am
jem

Well I think this clears up any doubts regarding Veolias blaming of passengers…

Heading – “Passengers: why we pushed the emergency button”

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10751391
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September 13, 2011 11:17am
KevinH

Setting aside the issue that the rail system wasn’t up to it, there was one considerable issue to all spectators at the Viaduct and the Cloud and that was there weren’t enough tiolets. Towards the end of the evening the CBD was awash with urine from a rather inebriated crowd.
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September 13, 2011 11:33am
kiwi in america

Owen McShane summed this up perfectly at 9.13am. Ive watched a number of tests at Eden Park and I’ve driven to neighbouring suburbs and walked. Quickest way in and out by far.
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September 13, 2011 11:58am
Rat

If we had the Waterfront Stadium, then this would have not happened.

John Banks’s fault

or

Wayne Barnes
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September 13, 2011 12:04pm
mikenmild

Apparently Wayne Barnes was hopping from train to train pushing those emergency stop buttons. Read it in the Sydney Morning Herald.
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September 13, 2011 12:07pm
Rat

I read about the 10th Anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers by Wayne Barnes
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September 13, 2011 12:11pm
Lance

I blame Canada
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September 13, 2011 12:26pm
Lance

As above
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjoNucs20Vw
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September 13, 2011 12:58pm

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